What’s The Point of Having a Jewish State If It Doesn’t Have Jewish Values?

I don’t pretend to know how or even if one can avoid an Apocalypse once it has been set into motion. And as of now, however frightening the images on YouTube or TV, the number of people involved is far to small to augur anything resembling a long term battle of the proverbial Arab or Muslim “street” against the so-called “Great Satan”. But I’m pretty sure that the longer it takes all sides to look in the mirror and initiate fundamental changes in their attitudes, actions and policies, the closer we’ll come to proving the fanatics right. If ever real leadership was needed among American, European and Arab leaders, it’s now. Sadly, it seems no one is up to the job.This is an eye-opening exploration of a troubling phenomenon: the fast-growing belief in Muslim countries that the end of the world is at hand—and with it the “Great Battle,” prophesied by both Sunni and Shi`i tradition, which many believers expect will begin in the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands. Jean-Pierre Filiu uncovers the role of apocalypse in Islam over the centuries, and highlights its extraordinary resurgence in recent decades. Identifying 1979 as a decisive year in the rise of contemporary millenarian speculation, he stresses the ease with which subsequent events in the Middle East have been incorporated into the intellectual universe of apocalyptic propagandists. Filiu also shows how Christian and Jewish visions of the Final Judgment have stimulated alarmist reaction in Islamic lands, both in the past and today, and examines the widespread fear of Christian Zionist domination as an impetus to jihad. Though the overwhelming majority of Muslims remains unpersuaded, the mounting conviction in the imminence of apocalypse is a serious matter, especially for those who are preparing for it.

I share the civilized world’s revulsion at the destruction being wreaked by anti-US demonstrators in the Middle East over the past two days, and in particular the savagery of the Libyan extremist militants murdering the US Ambassador. I also feel deeply for the Libyans, Egyptians and others in the Middle East whose hard-won hopes for democracy and a better life are being set backwards by the violence in their midst.

I echo the words of others that there is simply no justification. The Libyans would be still fighting a vicious civil war, slaughtering each other as the Syrians are today, if it weren’t for the strong support from the US and others in the West that helped to bring about a speedy end of the Gaddafi regime.

But the tragedy of Benghazi and riots in Yemen do not signal the end of the Arab Spring. Nor is it an indication of any “failed policies,” any more than it is justification for the shameful practice of political candidates in the US attempting to make points from a US Ambassador’s death.

Setting aside the armchair generals who would throw the US into full-on war in the Middle East, there are limits to what the US can do in any given region and situation to influence the course of events and outcome. The current US administration has used that limited capability prudently and effectively, with well thought out strategies.

It has been more than 200 years since America won its independence — long enough to forget that fragile countries coming out from under decades of oppression have a long walk to real democracy. Incidents and explosions happen along the way. It was not that long ago that Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically elected President, was firing cannons into the Russian Parliament. My country, East Timor (Timor-Leste), exploded in violence with angry mobs burning homes and shooting in the streets in 2006, four years after becoming a new democracy. Iraq is still spilling blood on that road.

Like Iraq, Libya and Egypt have the added challenge of extremists and Al-Qaeda remnants in their midst, who do not intend to go quietly into history. And these must be separated out from the demonstrators. In Libya the mobs were used as a cover for deliberate, targeted murder — in the hopes, no doubt, of further inflaming the situation and destabilizing the country.

Each of the examples above had similar elements in their countries, attempting to profit in one way or another by creating mayhem. All had individuals who had been thrown out of power who had not forgotten, as well as criminal elements and external influences look for openings to gain a foothold in a fragile State.

The forces for democracy need serious support, and true leaders, to come out on top of such challenges. They will remain vulnerable, and the country will rest on a precarious edge, until the programs that bring stability can take hold.

Stabilizing these new democracies cannot stop with containing a mob or stopping bloodshed. Once violence is contained, peace must be built. It is built with education, with employment, with human rights education, with the citizenry starting to see a better life for their children ahead. But these take time. They do not come automatically with regime change. The challenge is to keep the instigators at bay long enough for it to happen.

In Timor-Leste one of our peace building priorities has been literacy. As Thomas Jefferson knew, democracy cannot function smoothly with an illiterate population. They are too easily manipulated and open to being inflamed by unsavory elements for political or financial gain — as we have just seen.

While these young democracies attempt to get on their feet, an idiot American meth cooker who decided to call himself a filmmaker has just handed the extremist elements a birthday present.

Those who would attack Obama for an apology issued by an embassy staff member are either completely naive on foreign diplomacy or have forgotten their own education. What child in a democratic society has not been taught that with freedom comes responsibility, that if one exercises his freedom of speech to yell “fire” in a crowded theatre, he or she must bear responsibility for those injured or killed in the resulting panic?

Any person producing a film — though the term may be over-complimentary — such as this one knows the exact reaction it will create. It was not by accident that it was translated on YouTube into Arabic. He or she opened the perfect window for extremists to step through. Almost too perfect.

As one who knows the challenge of trying to walk a nation, however small, out of violence and oppression into a functioning democracy, I recognize the extreme challenge being faced by the administrations of Egypt, Libya and Yemen right now as they work to restore calm and decency, root out the extremist elements attempting to throw gasoline on the fire in their countries, and keep their countries on the road. While they struggle, all of us who enjoy freedom of speech and other basic human rights in our daily lives should be apologizing for the gross abuse of this freedom that just occurred, and the extreme setback it created.

The jerk who made that video, the one that supposedly incited rioting and murder in Egypt and Libya, is the very definition of a troll: He made it to elicit the reaction he was sure he’d cause. That is what trolls do.

Those who reacted are trolls, too, but of course worse: murderers. They exploited just any excuse — an obviously cheesy, fake movie seen by no one — to stir up their band of fanatics into visible outrage and violence.

The media who cover these trolls — the trolls who make the bait and the trolls who look for bait — are dupes themselves, just continuing a cycle that will only rev faster and faster until someone says: Stop. Stop feeding the trolls.

We’ve learned that online, haven’t we all? Oh, I sometimes have to relearn the lesson when one of my trolls dangles some shiny object in front of me and I snap. I just pulled the food bowl away from one troll: no reaction for you. I was just delighted to see another troll get his comeuppance and said so. But as a rule, a good rule, one should never, never feed the trolls. They only spit it up on you. Starving them of the attention they crave and the upset they hunger for and feed on is the only answer.

But still, there’s no controlling the trolls. Some still think the trolls can be stopped. An Australian newspaper just started a #stopthetrolls campaign to bring the ride miscreants to justice and silence. Good luck with that. In a sense, the rioters and murderers in Libya and Egypt and now elsewhere are demanding that someone stop the trolls they are choosing to get heated up about.

But, of course, there is no stopping them. Neither do I want to stop them. I believe in protecting free speech, which must include protecting even bad, even noxious speech.

Zeynep Tufecki, a brilliant observer of matters media, digital and social, cautioned on Twitter that we must understand a key difference in attitudes toward speech here and elsewhere in the world: “Forget Middle East, in most of Europe you could not convince most people that *all* speech should be protected. That is uniquely American,” shetweetedyesterday. “In most places, including Europe, ‘hate-speech’ — however defined — is regulated, prosecuted. Hence, folks assume not prosecuted=promoted…. U.S. free speech absolutism already hard to comprehend for many. Add citizen media to mix, it gets messy. Then, killers exploit this vagueness.” Excellent points and important perspective for the current situation.

But the Internet is built to American specifications of speech: anyone can speak and it is difficult unto impossible to stop them as bits and the messages they carry are designed to go around blocks and detours. The Internet *is* the First Amendment. We can argue about whether that is the right architecture — as an American free-speech absolutist, I think it is — but that wouldn’t change the fact that we are going to hear more and more speech, including brilliance and including bile. There’s no stopping it. Indeed, I want to protect it.

So we’d best understand how to adapt society to that new reality. We’ve done it before. This from Public Parts about the introduction of the printing press:

This cultural outlook of openness in printing’s early days could just as easily have gone the other way. The explosion of the printed word — and the lack of control over it — disturbed the elite, including Catholic theologian Desiderius Erasmus. “To what corner of the world do they not fly, these swarms of new books?” he complained. “[T]he very multitude of them is hurtful to scholarship, because it creates a glut and even in good things satiety is most harmful.” He feared, according to [Elizabeth] Eisenstein, that the minds of men “flighty and curious of anything new” would be distracted from “the study of old authors.” After the English Civil War, Richard Atkyns, an early writer on printing, longed for the days of royal control over presses. Printers, he lamented, had “filled the Kingdom with so many Books, and the Brains of the People with so many contrary Opinions, that these Paper-pellets become as dangerous as Bullets.” In the early modern period a few “humanists called for a system of censorship, never implemented, to guarantee that only high-quality editions be printed,” Ann Blair writes in Agent of Change. Often today I hear publishers, editors, and academics long for a way to ensure standards of quality on the Internet, as if it were a medium like theirs rather than a public space for open conversation.

Joshua Trevino is a staunchly pro-Israel conservative columnist who once worked as a speechwriter for George W. Bush – you know, the guy that bombed the hell out of Iraq in search of WMD that were… well, not there.

One telling quote:

When boats carrying unarmed civilian activists attempted in June 2011 to break the blockade of Gaza, Treviño tweeted out a message to the Israeli army: “Dear IDF: If you end up shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla — well, most Americans are cool with that. Including me.”

Trevino has been fired from his position as a columnist with prominent British paper The Guardian. (Do read the full TMI article)

Reason?

Being involved with (now defunct?) website called Malaysia Matters, which appears to have been dedicated to Anwar bashing. Word is that this was through FBC Media – that storied company paid to try and put a fake gleam on Malaysia’s tarnished record, and subsequently suspended by the BBC.

At least the British seem to know when to drop a bad egg.

Also worth asking, just so we don’t get more and more confused: do you BN people want us to believe that Anwar is pro-Israel or anti-Israel?

Just saying, I’m losing track here – all this agen Yahudi business, but then hiring Zionists to bash Anwar?

If you’re as tired as I am from this tirade, please feel free to peruse the much more amusingly cut video by MediaRakyat:

There is a desire to *control* conversation, to *civilize* it, to *cleanse* it. God help us, I don’t want anyone cleaning my mouth out. I don’t want anyone telling me what I cannot say. I don’t want a society that silences anything that could offend anyone.

I understand why Google decided to take down That Video from YouTube in Libya and Egypt, given how it is being used, while also arguing that it meets YouTube’s standards and will stay up elsewhere. But YouTube thus gives itself a dangerous precedent as some will expect it to cleanse other bad speech from its platform. YouTube is in a better position in Afghanistan, where the government blocked all of YouTube — but then it’s the government that is acting as the censor and it’s the government that must be answerable to its people.

But in any case, blocking this video is no more the answer than rioting and murdering over it. All this will only egg on the trolls to make more bad speech and in turn egg on trolls on the other side to exploit it.

The only answer is to learn how to deal with speech and to value it sufficiently to acknowledge that good speech will come with bad. What we have to learn is how to ignore the bad. We have to learn that every sane and civilized human knows that bad speech is bad. We don’t need nannies to tell us that. We don’t need censors to protect it from us. We certainly don’t need fanatics to fight us for it. We need the respect of our fellow man to believe that we as civilized men and women know the difference. We need to grow up.

Just weeks ago, Nabeel Rajab, the “Gandhi of Bahrain,” spent his birthday in a prison cell. Originally “jailed for a tweet,” Rajab, the renowned president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, now faces up to three years in prison for allegedly inciting violence among protesters against the Bahraini monarchy. Bahrain has been engulfed in turmoil since early 2011 when the US-backed Al-Khalifa regime launched a violent crackdown against the nation’s popular non-violent reform movement. The regime has since selectively targeted the island’s ethnic-majority, its Shia population, and has gained a terrifying reputation for using brutal torture tactics on those citizens detained. Recently, Bahrain’s appeal courts upheld the sentence of 20 other opposition activists, ignoring domestic and international outcry.

In the Spring of 2011, I met Rajab and his family in their home in Bahrain. His then nine-year-old daughter, Malak, joined us for the interview. Just hours before our arrival, masked state security forces raided the Rajab’s family compound in the middle of the night, bombarding the grounds with teargas and forcing their way into the Rajab’s home with heavy weaponry. Needless to say, little Malak was far too traumatized to attend school that day.

Now Malak joins her brother, 15-year-old Adam, and her mother, Sumaya, to demandjustice for her father whose appeal verdict will be announced on Thursday, September 27th. This date comes after the Bahraini court decision to postpone his hearing this week, a move that his lawyers claim was an attempt to prolong his jail-time. A countless number of international human rights organizations have joined in this call to action, and nearly 20 members of U.S. Congress demanded Rajab’s release in a letter to the King of Bahrain. Following his August 16th sentence, U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nulandcalled on Bahrain to “vacate” the charges against Rajab and called for “the government of Bahrain to take steps to build confidence across Bahraini society and to begin a meaningful dialogue with political opposition and civil society.”

Rajab is famous throughout not only the Middle East and North Africa, but alsointernationally for his tireless human rights advocacy and his pioneering commitment to using social media for social justice. Identified by Al Jazeera as “the informal leader of the Bahraini uprising,” Rajab responded that he plans to “forever remain in civil society” when I asked him about any potential political aspirations. Throughout the entirety of the uprising, his commitment to reform has been as steadfast as his tactics have been innovative.

Rajab is not alone in these traits or in his victimhood. What has deteriorated into violent clashes with security forces began as peaceful calls for reform, not Revolution. At the beginning of the uprising, a leader of the largest political bloc in Bahrain’s parliament, Matar Ibrahim Matar, described the exhaustive political jockeying in which his party had engaged with the Al-Khalifa family to avoid a breakdown in dialogue. Matar, too, has beensubjected to kidnapping, imprisonment, and alleged abuse at the hands of the regime, in addition to threats to his and his family’s safety.

“We are proud Bahrainis, despite their [the Al-Khalifa family’s] attempts to align us with Iran and call us subversives,” he explained. “We wanted to improve our country by continuing a moderate path of reform. That’s it. This crisis could and can be avoided.”

Indeed, these basic demands for reform were echoed among many of Bahrain’s young organizers. 27-year-old banker Mohammed*, a particularly visionary online organizer but not who one my typically picture as a “subversive,” imagines Bahrain as “the Singapore of the Middle East.” “I’ve done the math,” he explained in our interview. “And the discrimination against the majority of our people only serves to hinder our entrepreneurial potential.”

One finds little legal guidance on this knotty question since the international community has yet to develop a legal definition given terrorism’s politically charged nature. Terrorism literally means using terror as a strategy.

This definition would cover psychopaths mutilating hapless victims for immediate pleasure; husbands abusing their wives to exact future compliance; and landlords, criminals and political organisations threatening larger populations in pursuing their divergent goals.

Clearly, this definition is too broad to be useful. These divergent phenomena deserve either different names or at least recognition as sub-types, e.g., psychopathic, family and political terrorisms. Emulating Uncle Sam, I focus here single-mindedly on political terrorism, the most controversial sub-type.

How does one define that sub-type? Unfortunately, even this is not an easy task. My academic peers, as divided as international officials, have generated over a hundred different definitions. Fortunately, most disagreements are over details and semantics. There is some agreement that political terrorism’s core elements include ‘deliberately physically attacking non-combatants in pursuing political goals, even if the goals are just’. This working definition can help in analysing the complexities of political terrorism.

Firstly, are freedom fighters not terrorists? Those deliberately targeting non-combatants would be considered terrorists under this definition. Freedom fighters facing stronger armies often start targeting non-combatants and justify their repugnant means by arguing the justness of their goal. Under this definition though, ends do not justify means. Thus, many resistance movements globally, e.g., in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Colombia, engage in terrorism.

While Uncle Sam may think otherwise, the Mujahideen of the first Afghan war were as much terrorists as those of the second Afghan war since they often targeted non-combatants. However, this is merely a judgment on the means and not the ultimate aims of these groups around the globe. As the ANC’s transformation in South Africa reveals, terrorist groups with worthy goals can win international support by abandoning terrorism. The Arab Spring shows that freedom fighters can dislodge tyrants without not only terrorism but also major violence. Conversely, terrorism has a sorry success rate to date.

Secondly, do states commit terrorism? If they inadvertently kill non-combatants during combat, they do not commit terrorism but they could be guilty of war crimes, an equally serious offence, if they do not follow the international laws for protecting non-combatants during war. Cases where low-level soldiers deliberately target non-combatants would constitute individual terrorism and possibly state war crimes.

State terrorism only occurs when top officials materially support terrorists or order soldiers to deliberately target non-combatants. Thus, the civilian casualties caused inadvertently by the Americans in Iraq during combat cannot be considered terrorism, though some of them may constitute war crimes. However, the torture of prisoners, duly approved by top Bush-era officials, certainly constituted state terrorism as did the Hiroshima bombing, probably the most destructive single terrorist attack ever.

Thirdly, who is responsible for the thousands killed by terrorism in Pakistan? Some people hold the Pakistani and American governments culpable arguing that their policies provoke militants into terrorism. ‘Provocation’ is actually a legal term which can be used to mitigate certain crimes. British women who kill highly abusive husbands while facing further direct trauma can claim provocation in defence, but merely to request a lighter sentence.

Furthermore, they are not given a licence to just kill anyone in retaliation nor can relatives of even murdered women invoke provocation in killing murderer husbands.

Given these stringent requirements, can someone from Fata, even if he or she unfortunately loses a non-combatant relative to American or Pakistani army action, justifiably claim provocation if he or she travels all the way to Islamabad or Karachi to exact revenge on non-combatants instead of taking the shorter journey to the perpetrators and courts? Clearly, from a criminal justice viewpoint, legal culpability lies with those planning, executing and materially supporting terrorism.

True, beyond the realms of criminal justice, there is the question of political responsibility. Viewed so, both governments have indirectly contributed to terrorism. However, that political culpability cannot lessen the legal culpability of terrorists. There are more sensible avenues available for protesting bad government policies, such as peaceful protests and courts.

Thus, it is ironic to see a populist Pakistani politician linking terrorism primarily to drone attacks when he chooses for himself instead the legal (and personally safer!) option of peaceful protests against drone attacks.

There are appropriate responses to inappropriate acts and there are inappropriate ones. Those committing inappropriate responses deserve appropriate punishment, like those committing the original inappropriate act. Thus, the only basis for peace with the TTP should be their unconditional surrender and submission to justice.

Finally, is terrorism linked to particular religions? Biased analysts claim that though not all Muslims are terrorists, almost all terrorists are Muslim. Facts easily disprove this misrepresentation. While Al Qaeda has attracted the most attention since it targets the West, highly egregious terrorism has been committed more frequently by others in recent history. Some even committed it in the name of religion, e.g., the Lord’s Resistance Army in Africa routinely attacks villages, chopping men’s limbs, killing thousands, raping women in front of their families and keeping them as mistresses.

Others were committed in the name of nationalism and ideology, e.g., the Rwandan, ex-Yugoslavian and Cambodian civilian massacres. However, these barbarisms do not reflect the original teachings of those religions or ideologies, just as Al Qaeda’s barbarism does not reflect Islamic teachings. In Islam, whoever kills an innocent person is though as he killed all mankind. Non-combatants were granted amnesty during the 630 AD Mecca conquest. Sick minds, not religions, produce terrorism. Hence, religious terrorism is an oxymoron which should be discarded.

Thus, an objective analysis of terrorism requires a clear definition, which may not suit major powers. So, under Bush, the American definition degenerated into ‘whoever we consider one’. Second, it must be grounded in facts, not biases. Third, it requires differentiating between immediate and indirect causes. To date, these simple requirements have eluded global policymakers.

The news of Pakistani flag being hoisted by some miscreants in Sindhagi town, some 60 kilometer from Bijapur in Karnataka, was shocking. The flag was hoisted during midnight celebration of the New Year 2012 on the flag post of the government office premises.

The incident led to angry protests by Hindu organizations that called for strikes in a number of towns around Bijapur. Hundreds of youth gathered at the spot, set tyres on fire, blocked the road and the stoned a Muslim prayer hall.

One hear Pakistani flag being hoisted in Kashmir and understands the reason as the political undertones there, but such a thing happening in a remote place in a south India is something unreasonable.

Why such a thing is happening nearly 64 years after the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan is something unimaginable. Definitely, there was more to the story then just what was reported in the media.

The mystery was unraveled when six members of a right-wing Hindu group were arrested for such dastardly act. Those arrested belong to the Sri Ram Sena, a fringe Hindu group that has a history of creating disharmony in the society.

This was confirmed by the police that miscreants who hoisted the Pakistani flag did so with the prime motive of breaching the communal peace in an area where there was a sizable Muslim presence.

Its not the first time the needle of suspicion has taken a 180 degree turn. The first was the Samjutha Express blast in 2007 which many Pakistani nationals was killed.

The act was blamed on Indian Muslim terrorist organization but investigation later reveled that Hindu terrorist group were behind the train blast. The poor Muslims of India were vilified for the act of which they had no clue.

The Mecca Masjid blast in 2007 has similar story. After the initial blame game and the arrests of Muslim suspects the investigation turned around and it was Hindutva forces that were believed to be behind the blast.

The 2008 Malegoan blast at a Muslim graveyard is another episode in the chain events that again blamed on Indian Muslim organization. Later, it was found out that it was the handiwork of some Hindu terrorist organization.

In this backdrop when the news report of the Pakistani flag is being hoisted in Sindhagi town, it evoked suspicious response among the Muslim circles. The news report could not stand to the test of reasons. Why do south Indian Muslims would do such an act was a common question.

Speedy probe into the case that led to the arrest of six college students cleared the dust over this mystery. It also defused the communal situation that had all the ingredients of developing into a communal riot.

Investigation later revealed that the Pakistan flag was made at the home of one of the accused in this case and it was done so by the activists of Sri Ram Sene.

Sri Ram Sene, is a break away from the Bajrang Dal, an affiliate of the long-standing Hindu nationalist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

In 2009, Sri Ram Sene had claimed responsibility for attacking women outside a pub in the coastal town of Mangalore, saying that allowing females in pubs was against Indian culture.

A few years ago, Police arrested members of Sri Ram Sene for the desecration of a mosque in Mysore where a carcass of a pig was thrown near the prayer hall. The act triggered a major riot between Hindus and Muslims there.

The founder of the Sri Ram Sene Pramod Muttalik, who always likes to remain in the center of the controversy, has claimed that the arrested youths in the case of hoisting Pakistani flag were not members of his outfit. He claims that Sene does not have any students’ wing in the state points that the arrested person belonged to the Sangh Parivar.

Irrespective of the fact, whether it’s Sri Ram Sene or Shiv Sena or Bajrang Dal, that are behind such acts, the fact remains that these outfits have been guilty of creating communal divide in the country.

The political protection given to such outfits has emboldened them to commit such heinous crimes time and again.

The irony is the blame is put on the poor Muslims and when it comes to profiling they most bear the burnt of being vilified. There are stereotype that’s being dished out, such as: all Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorist are Muslims!

The likes of Sri Ram Sena or Shiv Sena or Bajrang Dal have a national immunity in such profiling because they have the benefit of doubt and they get away under the garb of patriotism.

A Hindu can never be a terrorist is an often hared cliché in India. The statement is rationalized by giving some hackneyed explanations. Hindus are vegetarians, they worship several gods, they are more god fearing etc, and other such theories that has become banal now.

Those who call Muslims ‘Babar ki Aulad’ are in fact sham creatures. They do so because they have deep rooted animosity against the Muslim that has come through the systematic act of brain washing. The anger, jealousy and hatred prompt them to do some mischievous acts. They do so in order to create a communal wedge in the society to keep Muslims on the back-foot all the time.

They have few aces up their sleeves and hoisting of the Pakistani flag is one such ace. The others being AMU minority character, Urdu language, Kashmir, Pakistan, Haj subsidy, cow slaughter, etc are to name a few. These issues are propped up to create acrimony in the society especially when the forces of communal harmony gains accent.

Apart from the deep rooted hatred against the Muslims, there is always an element of politics into such incidents. Hatching such conspiracy is duly driven with the greed to garner Hindu votes by making them treat the Muslim community with suspicion.

The above incident proves beyond doubt that Hindutva characters are prepared to do anything for cornering power. It’s apparent that such fissures are being done to ignite frictions between Hindus and Muslims to garner Hindu vote bank. The most ironical part is that such characters are not even ashamed of stooping so low to deceive people.

How long Indians are going to be fooled by such bandicoots is something that is hard to understand. These bunch of murder gangs are out there on a mission to destroy this country. Its only of they are dealt with the harshest punishment only then some sense can be enthused in our democracy.